8 Things To Do Before Christmas:

1.   Play Christmas songs in a nursing home

2.  Volunteer at John 3:16

3.  Finish Brother Rabbit’s album

4.  Make a really funny video spoof of a popular holiday film or song

5.  Play music for the kids at the youth shelter

6.  Cover Christmas songs with the band at shows

7.  Hug someone dressed up as Santa Clause

8. Take family photos for the women at the abuse shelter with their children on Christmas Day

God

      I don’t want to be anybody. I don’t want to care about the shoes I wear or how much money my job in the future will make me. Both of those things can be destroyed if touched with a flaming match. I only want to desire what can be increased when touched by a flaming match—and that’s sincere passion. Give me more of that undying passion for the one God with whom I am falling deeper in love with.

     My life was not saved to be spent looking for boyfriends and shopping for the hottest clothing. I am in a race, and there are things waiting to be learned and people that the God of the whole Universe wants me to save, if I could just keep my child-like eyes on Him.  

     I often forget that nothing in this world has meaning unless it’s from You. I often forget Jesus is the only thing to be sought during our lifetimes and that everyone else is spinning madly away from it, even me sometimes. And when I remember this, it makes me draw closer to You for comfort and pull farther away from the world. I now desire to hold the hand of a stranger just to pray with them in public, to do things such as journeying into the darkest of prisons just to play music for the prisoners and tell them about the Hope they thought they were too hopeless to have. I no longer care anymore about wearing fancy clothes all the time, or getting noticed by boys, or owning the newest piece of technology. None of these flammable things will be relevant, by any means, when my time comes and I breathe my last breath and I see Jesus.

Here I am, lying awake in my bed at 3:30 a.m., unable to even sleep because of how much I want to talk with You. Can we stay up all night and talk? It would be great fun.

-Your pilgrim  

It's Halloween

one of my favourite holidays that I usually spend dressed in costumes with friends. But today I got to spend it with one of my (adopted) families on a magical island they love to visit, called Kythira.

On our expedition today, I saw many great things, most of which I cannot describe. I climbed the stairs to the church inside a cave where John began the writing of Revelation. I watched from the edge of a cliff, water made up of 3 shades of blue collapse against boulders that were so large, they protruded out of the sea. I walked across volcanic rocks and smelled wild thyme. I photographed bats in a cave and found a dried-up seahorse under a rock. I saw a sunken ship in the ocean.

Throughout all of this, though I spent it happy and laughing, something in my heart cried and cried; not out of sadness, I must tell you. But it ached because I was just getting to see one more side of the Creator of all of these places, my Protector. And it was making me fall more in love with Him. He is more fascinating than my mind can allow me to connect words with to write down in my journal. I end here.